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It might be better to say that Glenn Burke was the man who brought the high five to baseball.

Prior to the mid-1970s, I remember players putting their palms out in front of them, holding them low below the waist, and then allowing their teammates to slap both of the hands from up above. I don't know what you call that (is it a low five?), but it was THE popular way to congratulate someone for hitting a home run, at least for a few years.

Steve Martin, in a "Two Wild and Crazy Guys" Saturday Night Live skit in the 1970s, held out the palm of his hand to Garrett Morris and said, "Slap my hand, black soul man!!" Not a high-five, but a gimme-five.

Steve Martin, in a "Two Wild and Crazy Guys" Saturday Night Live skit in the 1970s, held out the palm of his hand to Garrett Morris and said, "Slap my hand, black soul man!!" Not a high-five, but a gimme-five.

"Gimme five on the n*gg*r side" was around at least as early as the early 60's, though I doubt it was used much in baseball (smile). And anyway, that wasn't a high five to begin with, but rather an exchange of the sort that Martin and Morris practiced a decade later.

The low five was around at least during WW2 in African American culture. Like everything else, white men stole it and ruined it. (I'm kidding)

I, like Ray, find it highly unlikely that the high five didn't exist in some form prior to the 1970s. I'm actually shocked we don't have evidence of it much further back, other forms of ritualized contact like the handshake or bowing goes back thousands of years.

Hell, I feel like *I* may have high-fived someone when I was three years old in 1976. That'd have made me the inventor. I'm going through our old Super 8 home movies now.

I will say this: a search of the term "high five" in SI's Vault reveals nothing before 1980, as (if I did it right) a similar search of the NYT archives reveals nothing (of relevance) before then either.

I admit I expected to find the phrase used prior to 1977 in either/both outlets.

A usage of the phrase (in context) in print or anywhere on tv pre-1977, or video of the high five being performed, would settle this once and for all.

I just scanned through a bunch of big home runs from the 60s on youtube (Mantle's 500th, Maris's 61st, Williams's 521st, Mazeroski's, etc.) and yeah it's pretty amazing, they basically just do the quick handshake, no high fiving at all.

I just scanned through a bunch of big home runs from the 60s on youtube (Mantle's 500th, Maris's 61st, Williams's 521st, Mazeroski's, etc.) and yeah it's pretty amazing, they basically just do the quick handshake, no high fiving at all.

Looking harder at my Ngram results, it looks like almost all of the hits before the 1980s are simply "high" and "five" appearing coincidentally next to each other. If we take the long level tail as the natural background frequency, it does indeed look like the term was invented right around 1980.